The Ohlone Way

Over one hundred people came to this event held at the North Berkeley Senior Center adjacent to Ohlone Park. The event lasted more than two hours.

Malcolm Margolin, author of The Ohlone Wayand other books, gave an overview of 12,000 years of human habitation of the Berkeley area, and Richard Schwartz, historian and author of several books on local history, presented slides of mortar holes, petroglyphs, shell beads, and other signs of the Native American past.

Also participating was Vincent Medina of Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival told stories and discussed his work in bringing back language and culture of the Chochenyo Ohlone, who inhabited the Berkeley area. Quirina Luna-Geary talked about her revival of the Mutsun Ohlone language and Native dance traditions and regalia. A video of Linda Yamane, Rumsien Ohlone, was shown depicting the revival of traditional Native Arts she has mastered, from basketry to boat building.

And Corrina Gould, executive director of People Organizing for Change, discussed efforts to block construction on the parking lot opposite Spenger’s Fish Grotto, once the site of a a village and shellmound thousands of years old. Kent Lightfoot, archeologist and Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, presented a talk and slides on that ancient settlement.